The domain names are rented. I remember $12 .com renewals on GoDaddy, now it's $18, Cloudflare charges about $8 for renewals. The registrars always use dependent customers and play with pricing.

I have got a domain hack hal.al last year from host.al, the payment for the registration was done, and I got a confirmation for the domain ownership. After 2-3 days I got an email saying that it is a premium domain and I need to pay $2k to get the ownership. So it's always tricky to purchase a domain, you never own it